Gabor Szilasi became interested in photography after he
was forced to interrupt his medical studies in Hungary, having been blacklisted after
attempting to flee the country to escape the incoming communist regime in 1949. From
November 15-25 1956, Szilasi used his camera to document the Hungarian Revolution.
Escaping from Hungary in 1957, Szilasi arrived in Halifax and later settled in Montréal
in 1959. Employed by the Office du film du Québec, Szilasi worked on photography
assignments in Montreal aswell as in rural regions of Québec to document the province,
particularly the rural regions. In 1970, Szilasi began taking a series of photographs, in
particular, Charlevoix, Beauce, Abitibi and Lac St-Jean (Québec), the photographs of
Charlevoix winning him national acclaim. "Szilasi's Québec is an intimate study,
validated by his own visible love of the province and his subjects' open hospitality"
(National Film Board of Canada, 1980). This kind of work, photographs of people, facades,
interiors, and signs in the country and city, resulted in exhibitions such as La
Beauce (1974) and Panoramas de Montréal (1982). Geoffrey James wrote:
"His images of Beauce County are part of a larger and continuing documentation of
rural life in Québec--a document that includes landscapes, architecture, portraits and an
accumulation of those significant details that help to sum up a manner of living. In his
craftsmanlike and self-effacing way, Szilasi is pointing out truths that most people
recognize only too late . . ." (1974). Szilasi has said, "Traces of man interest
me very much, whether its architecture or interiors or just a street or sign. There
has to be a connection between nature and man in my photographs" (1980). Considered
an exponent of "down to earth humane realism," Szilasi rarely photographs
"official" buildings, choosing instead to capture the vernacular and
non-monumental architecture of Québec. In 1980 Szilasi would make his first trip back to
Hungary since his emigration. This trip marked the beginning of numerous visits where he
would photograph family friends and various architectural sites. The 1999 exhibition, Return
to Budapest, was composed of such images. In an interview with the artist, Barbara
Steinman suggested that Szilasi's decision to photograph architectural buildings had to do
with their durability and permanence: "You had to flee Hungary," she pointed
out, "a sense of shifting ground and the transience of reality could have permeated
your work. Yet, when I look at your photographs taken over the years, it's as though you
sought out and recorded a kind of stability. The fixed frontal views of buildings and
frozen moments of the interiors seem to confer permanence on those places." Szilasi
replied, "I believe that things have to be documented in the present, because
everything is changing and in eternal flux. With most of the sites in the Ste-Catherine
Street series or people aging or cityscapes changing--they have to be photographed
now" (1997). In 1997, Szilasi commenced a series of Polaroid portraits, which marked
the beginning of a more collaborative process, wherein subjects were encouraged to tell
Szilasi their opinions about the initial photograph. Szilasi would then proceed to take
more pictures of the subject, often incorporating his subject's suggestions. Also in 1997,
the Musée des Beaux-arts de Montréal held a retrospective of his work entitled Gabor
Szilasi: Photographs 1954-1996. Szilasi's latest project is a photographic series on
the Saint-Michel neighbourhood of Montréal, which explores this community's unique
mixture of South American, Italian, Haitian, and Québecois cultures. From 1979 to 1995,
Szilasi was a photography teacher at Concordia University in Montréal.